That's certainly true that VMware/EMC aren't about to share the good candy, but can you really fault it for that? Shareholders sure don't. And, plenty of IT pros think only VMware is really enterprise-class. As long as that perception remains, it can get away with the lock in.

I'm not against VMware sprawling into an ecosystem per-say, more that I am worried that it could cause a closed system in that it will cause platform specific requirements to leverage these tools. So they wouldn't port to a non-VMware environment, limiting how customers can leverage the tools. Much like if you want to piece together a solution from multiple vendors, if you risk vendor lock-in (granted, to less of an extent) the adoption will drop off significantly. This would be greatly resolved by leveraging the APIs to work in OpenStack, AWS and Azure. Counter-productive to growing VMware platform sales, but the value it would bring to other platforms could create a new service revenue stream. As long as the tools aren't native to VMware environments, VMware/EMC is laughing, but the reality is that it could be some time before they give up all these nice goodies to folks running hypervisors from the competition.

Thanks for chiming in here. Curious, why wouldn't you want VMware to develop into more of an ecosystem? I think they and the other players know that cloud workload portability is a key consideration for IT.

While I am a VMware supporter, I worry that they are trying to become too wide in terms of offerings. Management tools are definitely critical, but it's as if they are trying to be a full ecosystem (almost like the ERP monoliths). Unless they do indeed traverse the world of OpenStack and other non-VMware platforms, there is definitely risk of creating a closed ecosystem indirectly, limiting how their tools fit into non-VMware stacks. The latest sprawl into mobile device management will either be an indicator of how wide they plan to expand their involvement in virtualization, or dilute the core competency of the original virtualization platform. We've seen a few products that were launched before fully integrated into the larger platform, so it'll be interesting to see if these products will indeed support more platform types to give new sources of revenues for their management tools.

I'm really curious to see how VMware's SDN moves play out. The company definately shook up the legacy vendors in the networking market via Nicira/NSX. Now we have to see if VMware can grab customers there.

In July last year when VMW launched Log Insight, you wrote an article saying that potential competitors such as Splunk and Sumo Logic weren't concerned, because the new product's search capabilities were inferior. Do you have an opinion as to whether that's true and whether VMW is getting any traction with the product?

It's not doubt that VMWare is trying to embrace open source stuff more than ever. It's part of it's strategy to capture the high-end of the market and gain more market share/profit in short term. So indeed it's a kind of high-wire act. It performed pretty well in 2013 and I would like to see if it can continue with the trend to produce more amazing "v" series product.

VMWare started by offering a huge value play with businesses in optimizing hardware via virtualization. But it is interesting to see as they grow that they want to be a total value player for businesses.

It kind of reminds me a bit of what Microsoft has done for years. It seems, however, that VMWare is more on top of their game: Plays on the cloud and SDN are examples of how VMWare is able to branch out - lets see just how successful they can be in those areas before judgement is passed...

Part of what I call VMware's high wire act is to contribute to and cooperate with open source code projects. VMware has never demonstrated the animosity to open source that some other companies have, even though it is a strongly proprietary firm. That probably goes back to the academic roots and ties of its founders, including Mendel Rosenbl and Diane Greene. Now that it's under EMC-style management, it's still showing that same balancing act. And open source developes have been able to accept it hanging around and contributing to projects.

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